Monitor
Single Channel Video and Photographic series
2010
The project Monitor was a year-long documentation of an environmental intervention in the artist’s front yard in Saugerties, NY. A computer monitor was placed in a field and photographed and videotaped several times per week for the duration of a year that began on October 17, 2007 and ended on October 17, 2008. During that time, a symbolic burning and excavation was performed around the perimeter of the monitor that echoed its rectangular shape. Over time, the excavation eventually filled in with new growth, asserting the cyclical regenerative power of the seasons in nature over the destructive machinations of mankind.
The central image and subject is a computer monitor, but the project itself involves monitoring the landscape over a long span of time. The project is a meditation on the process of growth and decay and the desire to reconcile our personal relationship with nature and technology. The conclusion is that nature will outlast us and ultimately surround our obsolete attempts at technological perfection with the messy but loving embrace of flowers and foliage. The larger implication of our own mortality as a species remains ambiguous.
The video is presented as an infinite seamless loop, each loop lasting 5 minutes. This online version loops twice. You can also view a Hi-Res version of the video.
The corresponding photo series consists of a total of 120 images and has been printed and exhibited in a variety of forms. A composite of 96 images printed at 60cm by 60cm was exhibited at the “60×60 Images” exhibition sponsored by Taukay Musical Editions Contemporanea in Remanzacco, [Udine] Italy and at the Art Academy of Cincinatti. There is also a 38 page softcover book version containing 90 images from the series available through Blurb (see below):
